Chamberlain Smart Garage Hub Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Amazon Echo has long been able to control garage doors, but so what? The vast majority of the time you’re opening or closing your garage, it’s when you’re in the driveway or the garage. Now, finally, Apple HomeKit is making garage door control from your phone a possibility.

The device that makes it all possible is the Chamberlain Smart Garage Hub. The pricing hasn’t been finalized, but the hub will connect Chamberlain MyQ products — like garage door openers and lights — to the Home app and Siri.

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Like most other garage door openers, Chamberlain’s MyQ can:

• Open and close the door remotely, via an app
• Check the status of garage door
• Use other devices to trigger the garage door

But the new integration with HomeKit — facilitated by the Smart Garage Hub — adds an extra dimension. You’ll soon be able to:

• Use Siri to control the door and check its status
• Include the garage door in HomeKit scenes, along with other products like door locks and cameras
• Control Chamberlain lights along with the garage door

I’m a little disappointed that, even with the forthcoming second-generation MyQ garage door controller, it seems Chamberlain will require users to buy a separate hub to connect with HomeKit. But this is a step in the right direction, especially for Apple’s platform.

David Priest/CNET

Each incremental step forward means scenes in the Home app become more comprehensive, and thus more useful. For instance, with this new integration, users will be able to issue a single command to Siri that shuts off lights, locks doors and closes the garage. That’s a really helpful command when you’re heading to bed and don’t want to take a lap around the house.

As commands for cameras expand, and further security options integrate with HomeKit, a similar “Goodnight” command could become even more powerful.

Chamberlain plans to release the Smart Garage Hub by July 2017.

Happiest Baby Snoo Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Chris Monroe/CNET

How much do you love your kid? Would you drop $1,150 to give them a better night of sleep? Influential tech designer Yves Béhar and legendary doctor Harvey Karp (inventor of the Five S’s for soothing infants) have teamed up to create a baby bed called the Happiest Baby Snoo — and that’s what it costs.

The Snoo bed is no standard sleeper, it’s heavy duty. It takes two people to carry comfortably, and it looks great. All that is due to Behar’s design, which eschews the gaudy colors and cheap plastic that adorn most baby-tech these days, and instead uses high quality woods, fabrics and metals.

The features, too, set Snoo apart from the competition. It will rock children and use white noise to soothe them, but how it does so is carefully calibrated to respond to the particular needs of the child. So the baby is sleeping, Snoo will emit a low frequency noise and rock more slowly. If the child begins to wake up and cry, the bed will rock more rapidly and raise the frequency of its noise emissions.

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The bed also includes swaddling sacks that keep children on their backs during their first six months of life, and are made of mesh to keep them from overheating.

The concepts behind Snoo aren’t new, but their execution could very well be more successful, given the minds and research behind the device. That said, the $1,150 price tag is simply an absurd prospect for most parents — especially since the device will work for only six or seven months for many children.

I’m looking forward to testing out the Happiest Baby Snoo soon, but I’m looking forward even more to the price dropping so parents can do more than look on wistfully at one more device they won’t buy for their kid.

4moms Moxi Stroller Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Ever feel like you’re just being wasteful spending so much time walking with your child? Okay, maybe not — but baby-tech developer 4moms has designed a stroller to get even more out of those trips to the park.

The Moxi stroller uses the kinetic energy of its wheels, generated by walking with your child, to charge your phone, light your path with headlights and track your distance on an LCD screen. Pretty cool, right? The bad news is, it costs a steep $700 (converts to roughly AU$950, £570).

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Moxi offers a few extra design features to sweeten the deal, though. Most notably, the seat can reorient in three different ways. It can face forward or backward, and it can lie flat for young infants. This feature alone will cost a pretty penny with many high-end strollers — so the price tag isn’t quite as bad as it initially might seem.

My only two critiques of the stroller itself as I’ve seen thus far are its relatively simple app and its weak headlights. The app and LCD screen currently display distance traveled, but I’d like to see more creative information and analysis of walks.

Chris Monroe/CNET

The headlights look nice, but they certainly aren’t strong enough to light a dark path. Most parents won’t be out after dark with their children anyway, but it’d be nice to see the features have real use to them, other than as extra lines on a feature-list.

The Moxi stroller is available online now for $700.

Faraday Future’s first production car, FF 91 hits the road in 2018

After a lot of hype and intrigue, Faraday Future has finally revealed its first production car. The FF 91 keeps some of the styling of the audacious concept car shown last year, but puts it in to a more practical design. 

On the outside, Faraday Future chose a design that focused primarily on aerodynamics. The rounded front and angular back are designed to make it very aerodynamically efficient, while the long 126-inch wheelbase gave the ability to have a very spacious interior. 

• Faraday Future FFZero1 Concept: A wheel in the mobility revolution

There’s a large glass panoramic roof which uses a specialist Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal glass. This same glass is used on the back and side windows, so that users can tap the glass to dim it, and make it less transparent. 

Faraday Future

Inside the car, there’s a wide screen rather than a rear view mirror which combines visual footage from the side mirror cameras and rear view camera to give you a full view of everything going on around the vehicle. This should completely eliminate blind spots. 

NASA inspired seats can adjust automatically to put users into the most comfortable and ergonomic positions possible, with adjustments for lower leg, lumbar and upper back support as well as heating, massage and ventilation for cooling. 

As you’d expect from the wildly ambitious car company, the FF 91 is equipped with some very futuristic technology. It can unlock and let you in to the car as soon as it recognises your FFID from your phone. If you don’t have your phone, it can use its facial recognition scanner. This way, you’ll never need a physical key of any kind.

Once it recognises you, it automatically adjusts things like the car’s climate, seat positions, entertainment and driving routes. In a sense, customising the car to each individual. 

Faraday Future

Cameras on the inside of the car can recognise users too, and also recognise facial expressions, so that it can tell what mood your in match an experience to that. 

It has driverless valet parking, similar to the recently shown off Tesla feature. So your car can drop you at the door and go park itself. Using the app, drivers can summon the vehicle from its parking space, or schedule a specific pickup location and time. 

Each of the doors can open itself independently and have sensors in them to stop them opening too far.

Digging down to proper car specs, the FF 91 can go from 0-60mph in a staggering 2.39 seconds, thanks to its all-electric 1,050bhp power unit. It has a maximum range of between 378 and 435 miles, and it can fully refill its depleted battery cells within an hour. 

Faraday Future

There are 13 long and short range radars onboard, 12 ultrasonic sensors, 10 high definition cameras and a 3D retractable lidar, all built in to make it self-driving, when legislation approves of its use. Oh, and by the way, it has really fast internet onboard too. 

Reservations for the vehicle are open now and, should you want to own one, you’ll need to slap down a deposit of $5000. Thankfully, it’s a refundable deposit, and the first 300 orders will get the option to upgrade their reservation in March to grab a limited Alliance Edition version. 

The sad news – if you really wanted the FF 91 – is that only customers in the US, Canada and China are currently able to reserve the car. 

Google Assistant spreads its wings: Android TV, Android Wear 2.0 and other smart devices confirmed

As the battle of the machines rages on, Google has confirmed that Google Assistant is coming to Android TV, both on compatible televisions as well as set-top boxes. 

Making the announcement at CES 2017, Google gave the timeline of “the coming months”, confirming that your Sony Bravia TV will get the update, allowing you access to Google Assistant on your TV.

When Google announced the new Assistant, it made it an exclusive feature of its Pixel smartphones and Google Home device. In a strange move, the full Assistant experience is denied to regular Android smartphones. 

This announcement is the first real signs of Google Assistant spreading its wings and making its way to a new selection of devices – those not manufactured by Google itself.

• What is Google Assistant, how does it work, and when can you use it?

The poster boy for Android TV set-top boxes is the Nvidia Shield, also updated at CES 2017. Google has confirmed that the new Nvidia Shield will be the first to give you the full hands-free Google Assistant experience, like Google Home, with Nvidia’s Shield Spot one of the first devices that will spread Google Assistant around your house – a little like the Amazon Echo Dot. 

In addition to Android TV, Google has confirmed that the long-awaited Android Wear 2.0 will also give you Google Assistant, so we imagine that there’s going to be a wider update to Android at some point in the future too in support of this. 

Finally, Google Assistant is also going to be available in cars. Currently, this appears to be through compatible Android-powered in-car infotainment systems, with no specific mention of Android Auto.

With Amazon’s Alexa kicking up a storm at CES 2017, there’s a general feeling that Google is in the position of playing catch-up in the battle of the smart assistants. But all the signs are here that 2017 is going to be all about a more connected, smarter experience.

• CES 2017: All the announcements that matter

Sony HT-ST5000 soundbar supports Dolby Atmos and Google Assistant voice-control

Sony has unveiled a number of company firsts at CES 2017: it’s first OLED TV, it’s first 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player and now its first Dolby Atmos soundbar, the HT-ST5000.

• CES 2017: All the announcements from LG, Samsung, Panasonic and more

The new soundbar packs 12 speakers into its sleek body, two of which are dedicated to firing sound up towards the ceiling, for it to bounce off and travel back down to your ears. Each speaker driver is made up of a woofer and tweeter, so each can claim to deliver a full range of sound.

Sony’s own Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and S-Force PRO Front Surround audio technologies work together inside the soundbar to help deliver an effective and accurate Dolby Atmos enveloping sound.

You shouldn’t be left wanting in the connections department, as there are three HDMI inputs, optical and coaxial digital inputs, a single HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel) output, USB input, Bluetooth and NFC. If you want to plug in a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player or 4K-capable games console you can, as the HT-ST5000 supports 4K HDR pass-through.

It also supports multi-room audio via Chromecast streaming with other compatible Sony products. And as there’s Google Home and Google Assistant support too, you can bark voice commands at the soundbar to change the volume, skip track or pause what’s playing. The Sony HT-ST5000 will be available from the Spring with pricing to be confirmed.

Carnival Cruises designed a wearable for even lazier vacations

There’s an unlikely entry to the wearables market coming to this year’s CES. During a keynote speech scheduled for Thursday, megalithic cruise company Carnival is will announce a new app and quarter-sized “smart medallion” called the Ocean Compass.

According to the New York Times, which revealed the Ocean Compass as part of a larger story about the high-tech changes coming to the cruise industry, the Ocean Compass was developed in a secret Carnival Corporation skunkworks in Doral, Florida by two former Walt Disney World execs. The goal is to eliminate the passenger headaches like long boarding lines and messy payment systems in the same way that Disney World engineered the park around its tech-laden MagicBands.

Although some competitors already offer seamless payment and smart wristbands, Carnival’s medallions are designed to work even without ever touching a sensor. Simply walking up to your room will unlock the door, and the device can be used to help family members find each other on board. That also means passengers can order food via an app and have it delivered directly to wherever they happen to be and the system will remember things like entertainment preferences and pre-planned activity schedules. To add that must-have luxury factor, the medallions are all laser engraved with the passenger’s name and onboard gift shops will be selling accessories to disguise it as jewelry.

The devices should start showing up on Carnival’s Princess Cruises later this year and CEO Arnold W. Donald told the Times that his company is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to build a system that requires around 7,000 sensors per boat. Carnival is expected to make that investment back, however, once the system’s perks allow it to start charging more for tickets and the credit card-connected medallion starts allowing passengers to seamlessly part with their money. And, as the Times notes, the Compass will also power a brand new gambling platform onboard those same ships.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Source: New York Times

CES 2017 Day Two: New laptops, new phones, and old ideas made new

Update all the laptops

Thinner, faster, lighter, stronger.

With new 7th-generation Core chips from Intel landing in the months before CES, it was time for a seemingly every PC manufacturer to update their lineup. In the cards for everybody: thinner, lighter, marginally faster, longer-lasting batteries, Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C, and a notable decrease in bezels.

• Samsung’s updated Notebook 9 is the new lightest 13-inch laptop
• Samsung finally makes gaming laptops: this is the Notebook Odyssey
• ASUS announces ZenBook 3 Deluxe and updated ROG gaming laptops
• HP’s CES 2017 releases are truly gorgeous PCs

The new BlackBerry that’s not made by BlackBerry

BlackBerry’s back, alright!

From the looks of the BlackBerry Mercury you’d think that BlackBerry hadn’t changed at all. But this is a phone from TCL, the new licensee of the BlackBerry brand, even if it looks and feels every part a BlackBerry. We’re still light on practically every detail, from specs to the actual production name, but we’re still kind of excited to see that the shifting of the BlackBerry brand doesn’t mean the abandonment of the classic keyboard.

• BlackBerry announces the ‘Mercury’ without actually confirming anything, including its name
• BlackBerry ‘Mercury’ hands-on: Riding into 2017 on a phone with no name
• Mercury gives us reasons to be hopeful about BlackBerry in 2017

Honor’s Magic is a design showcase as a phone

Curved all around, because they can.

Huawei’s never been a manufacturer that shied away from making crazy hardware, and their Honor sub-brand has generated a phone that’s a truly beautiful piece of design: the Honor Magic. The glass is curved in every direction more substantially than any phone we’ve seen before, married to a thin metal frame. As Android Central’s Andrew Martonik described it, it’s similar to the “Galaxy S7 edge, but it’s even more impressively thin and compact.” More impressive, however, might be the software: Honor baked in artificial intelligence to help the phone predict what you’ll want to do, such as dynamically rearranging your home screen.

• Honor Magic hands-on: Huawei puts its design prowess on display

The first Chromebook designed for Android apps

Google and Samsung partnered up to design an impressive new pair of Chrome OS devices: the Samsung Chromebook Plus and Pro. These convertible Chromebooks are the first designed with running Android apps in mind, and as such they’re equipped with full motion sensor suites. Beyond that, Samsung also built in their stylus tech — pop out the docked pen and you’ll be able to write and draw to your heart’s content on the hi-res 12.3-inch display.

• Samsung’s new Chromebook is a convertible with a stylus

ASUS announces two new phones with four cameras

ASUS took to CES 2017 to unveil their newest ZenFone devices: the ZenFone 3 Zoom and the ZenFone AR. The ZenFone 3 Zoom is the follow-up to the unique if flawed optically-zooming ZenFone Zoom, and its ditching of the mechanical optical zoom is both a disappointment and not a surprise. In its place are a pair of cameras — one standard, one telephoto, not unlike the iPhone 7 Plus. On the flip side is the ZenFone AR, which uses its cameras and sensor array to scan your surroundings in full 3D. It’s not the first phone to do this, but it’s certainly the most compact Google Tango phone we’ve yet seen.

• ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom joins the dual-camera train, adds a 5000 mAh battery for good measure
• ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom hands-on: Focused on being more than just a camera
• Tango and Daydream finally coexist in a single phone thanks to the ASUS ZenFone AR

NVIDIA’s Shield TV box has been something of a sleeper hit — those that know it love it, but it’s never really got a heavy push behind it. We don’t know if that’s going to change with the latest update, but we do know it’s an impressive update. Coming to the Android TV party is Google Assistant, Samsung SmartThings integration, HDR video, and a whole bunch of new games.

• New NVIDIA Shield Android TV box includes Google Assistant, 4K HDR streaming
• Google Assistant is coming to Android TV
• NVIDIA Spot peripheral extends the Shield Android TV’s Google Assistant throughout the home

Sony’s UBP-X800 4K Blu-ray player comes with Dolby Vision support

After giving us a taster of what was to come with a prototype version last year, Sony’s first 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player is here. The UBP-X800 will do just what you’d expect from a 4K player: handle 4K Blu-ray discs and streaming from 4K-compatible services. It supports HDR as well, of course, as well as Dolby Atmos and DTS:X sound formats.

• CES 2017: All the announcements that matter from LG, Samsung, Panasonic and more

However, it doesn’t seem to be able to handle Dolby Vision content, something which LG’s new player can. It’s a slightly strange move considering the company’s stunning new A1 Series OLED TV can support the format.

If you haven’t got a complete library of 4K Blu-rays just yet, don’t worry, because the UBP-X800 will accept your regular Blu-ray and DVD discs, along with CD, Super Audio CD (SACD) and “almost any format available via USB”.

Anything that isn’t in 4K will be upscaled to near-4K quality and any audio that isn’t high-resolution will also be processed using Sony’s DSEE HX engine to upscale the sampling frequency and bit-depth. Audio and video signals can be separated via twin-HDMI outputs to avoid interference.

Sony also claims the UBP-X800 can upscale 4K HDR content on 4K SDR TVs in such a way that it can “reproduce the proper brightness and color [sic] gradations to provide the best picture possible”.

The Sony UBP-X800 should be available from the Spring for around £400.

Sony announces refreshed line-up of 4K HDR TVs, including Dolby Vision support

Sony’s piece de resistance at CES 2017 may have been the A1 4K HDR OLED, but the company hasn’t given up on more conventional LCD sets. To that extent, Sony has five new 4K HDR TV ranges for 2017, as well as four new full HD ranges.

• Best TVs of CES 2017: Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, LG OLED and more

The XE94 and XE93 TVs sit at the top of Sony’s 4K tree, and they share virtually the same feature set. The XE94 is available solely as a 77in model while the XE93 is available in 65in and 55in guises. Both will support 4K HDR as well as Dolby Vision, should you have the right source and content to show on them. They also get Sony’s own 4K HDR Processor X1 engine which promises 40 percent more power than the previous 4K Processor X1 and to upscale non-HDR content to near-4K HDR quality.

A new Slim Backlight Drive+ feature offers an improved grid-array backlighting system over the previous version, which claims to deliver more precise dimming control, “superior brightness and exceptional contrast”.

Both TV ranges run on Android TV OS which now integrates with Google Home and any connected devices you may have. Sony has also said they’ll get PlayStation Vue and Ultra, a 4K HDR streaming service, but this is only available in the US.

Sony

Moving down the line we reach the XE90 series, available in 49in, 55in, 65in and 75in variants. It has many of the features found in the XE93/94, but loses out on Dolby Vision support and the Slim Backlight Drive+ system.

The XE85 series, available in 55in, 65in and 77in models takes a further drop in features, losing out on X-tended Dynamic Range Pro, a feature that promises to enhance the contrast levels for the best possible picture quality (the XE94/93/90 TVs all have this feature).

The final TV range in Sony’s 2017 repertoire is the XE80 which is also a 4K HDR screen and is available in 43in, 49in and 55in variants. This range ditches the 4K HDR Processor X1 engine in favour of the 4K Processor X1 version and runs on the Android TV OS.